UTA prof leads online petition drive against anti-gay schools

Feb 24, 2009

Charles Hermes, a visiting assistant professor at the University of Texas at Arlington, is leading an online petition drive urging the American Philosophical Association to take a stronger stand against schools that prohibit homosexual acts, according to this report from The Chronicle of Higher Education. The petition, which can be found here, has about 1,000 signatures and urges the APA to prohibit schools that discriminate based on sexual orientation from posting open jobs with the organization’s placement service. Interestingly, Hermes is not gay, but he launched the campaign after a school to which he was applying demanded that he sign a “statement of faith” saying the school “will not condone acts that Scripture forbids,” including homosexuality, according to this blog post.

“To avoid offending those Christians who love their neighbors, and who leave the judging for God, I will hereafter refer to statements like these as statements of discrimination instead of statements of faith,” Hermes wrote.